In the context of the present invention, a “cutting plate” means a plate (or structure) for holding electrical cut-off connectors, which is intended to be mounted on an aircraft and to accept electrical connectors, preferably conventional EN3545-type connectors. Cutting plates allow these electrical connectors to be used to join together electrical cables of at least two wiring harnesses (or bundles) of such cables, which respectively access the two sides of the cutting plate, so as to make an electrical connection between the electrical cables. A cutting plate may have a different number of such electrical connectors, potentially ranging from 1 to 18 or more connectors, notably according to the size and/or number of harnesses to be joined together.
In general, such a cutting plate is made of metal and notably usually comprises:
a planar interface able to accept the electrical connectors;
an environmental seal which protects against drips of liquid from the environment and in some instances has a fixing function;
two ramps which are arranged on either side of the interface and are intended to act as supports for the said harnesses; and
fixing elements, for example produced in the form of lateral walls or of a base element, which allow the cutting plate to be fixed to the interior of the aircraft, generally to the fuselage.
Now, for one and the same aircraft, there are a high number of different cutting plates. These plates notably differ in terms of their size and shape, in terms of the relative arrangement of their constituent parts (interfaces, ramps, etc.) and in terms of the size and shape of these constituent parts. There is thus a very wide variety of cutting plates available even for accepting the same number of connectors. Thus, for certain given numbers of connectors there are several tens of different plates available.
This wide diversity of cutting plates leads to a lack of standardization throughout the fuselage of the aircraft where such plates are used.
This high number of models, of different sizes and shapes, leads to disadvantages notably in terms of manufacture, installation, maintenance and cost.